The Alt-Right Is Not Who You Think They Are

Southern, uneducated, generational racists? Not quite.

In tweets following the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, former President Barack Obama quoted words from Nelson Mandela’s autobiography: “No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”

The sentiment has resonated with millions of Americans and garnered some of themost “likes” in the history of Twitter. It also offered a stark contrast to the reaction of President Trump.

Yet while a moving sentiment, Mr. Obama’s comments, if taken literally, represent an incorrect interpretation of today’s racial challenges and the nature of the so-called alt-right. The statements imply an outdated theory of racism. Among many anti-racists, there has long been a naïve hope that racism is handed down from one generation to the next. If that cycle is broken, this view goes, then racial harmony can finally prevail.

Althoughscholarly literature provides some evidence for this argument, the alt-right shows that it does not tell nearly the entire story.

In my experience with the alt-right, I encountered a surprisingly common narrative: Alt-right supporters did not, for the most part, come from overtly racist families. Alt-right media platforms have actually been pushing this meme aggressively in recent months. Far from defending the ideas and institutions they inherited, the alt-right—which is overwhelmingly a movement of white millennials—forcefully condemns their parents’ generation. They do so because they do not believe their parents are racist enough.

In an inverse of the left-wing protest movements of the 1960s, the youthful alt-right bitterly lambast the “boomers” for their lack of explicit ethnocentrism, their rejection of patriarchy, and their failure to maintain America’s old demographic characteristics and racial hierarchy. In the alt-right’s vision, even older conservatives are useless “cucks” who focus on tax policies and forcefully deny that they are driven by racial animus.

Despite some growth over the last few years, the alt-right itself remains a small, mostly anonymous, and marginal movement. So when considering the attitudes of young people, it may be helpful to consider a much broader category: Trump supporters. How did the youngest white Americans respond to the most racially polarizing election in recent memory? It looks like they favored the man who campaigned on the promise of a border wall.

According to a large 2016 study conducted by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, whites in high school favored Trump over Clinton by a staggering margin—larger even than Trump’s margin among adult white voters. Among this sample, 48 percent preferred Trump, 11 percent preferred Clinton, and the rest would not vote or choose another candidate.

One study is not definitive, and the political identities of Generation Z are still forming, but the rising generation of whites shows signs of being more right-wing than the millennials. It raises the possibility that a significant number of them will come to embrace open racism.

The notion that youthful rebellion necessarily leads young people to the left is an additional blind spot in mainstream thinking. To begin with, it is ahistorical. In the early 20th century we saw multiple transgressive movements on the right. Furthermore, as radical leftists of the baby boom generation assumed important positions in politics, academia, and the media, it should not have been shocking to see millennials with a contrarian streak respond by taking embracing right-wing radicalism. Not all such young people, of course, but enough to make waves.

Another misconception about racism is that education is a panacea. Overall, higher educationdoes apparently lead to lower levels of racial hostility. Yet again, the alt-right complicates this picture. The typical alt-right supporter does not lack education. The movement’s skillful use of the internet alone suggests otherwise. In interviews with people in the alt-right —including the movement’s leading voices and anonymous Twitter trolls—I found at least some degree of college education was a common denominator.

To complicate matters further, many people in the alt-right were radicalized while in college. Not only that, but the efforts to inoculate the next generation of America’s social and economic leaders against racism were, in some cases, a catalyst for racist radicalization. Although academic seminars that explain the reality of white privilege may reduce feelings of prejudice among most young whites exposed to them, they have the opposite effect on other young whites. At this point we do not know what percentage of white college students react in such a way, but the number is high enough to warrant additional study.

A final problem with contemporary discussions about racism is that they often remain rooted in outdated stereotypes. Our popular culture tends to define the racist as a toothless illiterate Klansman in rural Appalachia, or a bitter, angry urban skinhead reacting to limited social prospects. Thus, when a white nationalist movement arises that exhibits neither of these characteristics, people are taken by surprise.

These stereotypes may serve a useful purpose, as they reinforce the idea that racism is a socially undesirable attribute. But they also leave Americans baffled when they encounter racists that do not fit these descriptions, and the response is often flat-footed.

In recent years, the alt-right was almost exclusively an online phenomenon. Charlottesville showed that the alt-right wants to move into the real world. Despite crowing from the alt-right that their rally was a success, the end result probably did their movement more harm than good. This does not mean the movement is down for the count. The alt-right has proven itself alarmingly adaptable, and it will learn from its failures and soldier on.

By all means, as we mourn the dead, there is nothing wrong with hopeful words. Nor should we overestimate the size and influence of the alt-right. But the challenges embodied by the violence in Charlottesville are not going to be resolved on their own. Moving forward, a clear-eyed vision of the racial landscape in America is now more important than ever.

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91 Responses to The Alt-Right Is Not Who You Think They Are

There have always been fringe, rightwing groups in the US. Nothing new there. But the so-called alt-right, comprised of Nazi wannabes and assorted peckerwoods, is truly the spawn of the looney left, whose obsession with race has created the toxic environment we find ourselves in.

The thing is when blacks begin to feel power and a secure place in America then their true colors show-at least among many. Left unchecked they would become the biggest racists of all. You can see that now. So what it comes down to are white people going to give away their country? Until blacks become cooperative and productive things need to stay as they are. Sad maybe but that’s just the way it has to be.

The alt-right, like any other tribe, is called to mind, generally by one thing. In the alt-right’s case it is more question than not, but the question is: What is a nation? What is my nation?

America hasn’t ever possessed a practical patriotic impulse or rationale and now that the story we told ourselves for years has come to be ideologically/self-righteously denied or rejected almost in toto, we find the practical reason of the land beneath our feet, prime and particularly poignant.

Obama and anyone associated with him can do nothing to “educate” or move with equal desire. History begins, in earnest with him/them and a charismatic, owed leader.

Trump’s presidency has the possibility to solve the problem of the charismatic leader’s heir.

The largest part of the citizenry is apolitical and when faced with the question, who would you prefer as neighbor, a white nationalist or a social justice, native- land hating, anarchic nowhere man? Who do you think they’ll choose?

“The thing is when blacks begin to feel power and a secure place in America then their true colors show-at least among many. Left unchecked they would become the biggest racists of all.”

This is of course nonsense. Even the last executive had more white staff and and based on his record did exactly what the white majority demanded he do. He scrapped his original foreign policy option. He hired Wall Streeters. His medical plan was created by white elitists, His foreign policy wasn’t much less aggressive than that of Sec Clinton, which should say something about the influence of whites oh his agenda.

If anyone is looking to blame blacks for the state of the union I have two comments.

1. It’s an old hat trick

and

2. You might want to take a look at the National power structure in every category and think again.

“Racial identity politics is a curse. Sadly, it seems we’ve been cursed by it well and and good. The poison’s reaching down to the bone.”

First most of the references about race referring to color are not resulting in much of the way of advancement for blacks. The references are used but strategically benefit whites women, homosexual practitioners, hispanics and asians. Blacks trail as to any advantage, though among blacks women fair much better than men.

I fin the comments here hard to buy in a country built of identity politics.

“The thing is when blacks begin to feel power and a secure place in America then their true colors show-at least among many. Left unchecked they would become the biggest racists of all. You can see that now. So what it comes down to are white people going to give away their country? Until blacks become cooperative and productive things need to stay as they are. Sad maybe but that’s just the way it has to be.”

The black population is not changing very fast. You are not “giving the country to them” in any sense. I agree, black clannishness is a problem and should not be encouraged.

A mob of minority students formed a human chain to block white students from attending the classes they were paying for at Berkeley less than a year ago. This human chain that formed to deny white students their basic rights included asian and indian students, who were ready to get physical in the fight against “white privilege” .]. There is NO MYSTERY about what young white Americans are gravitating toward identify politics. Identity politics–without a white camp–marginalize the lives of young white Americans.
This is reality. Can you handle it, American Conservative? or will you join the ranks of the irrelevant?

anyone remember the film “The Deerhunter”? of the many intense scenes, is the moment in the final pre-Vietnam hunting trip, where Stanley (the late John Cazale) is once again unprepared, and assumes the uber-prepared Michael (Robert DeNiro) will bail him out by offering his (Michael’s) extra pair. A heated exchange ensues, culminating with Michael holding a rifle cartridge in Stanley’s face and proclaims, “Stanley, see this? This is this. This ain’t something else. This is this.” The alt-right is the alt-right. It’s not the alt-left, or the right, or the Nazi party, or the KKK. It’s the alt-right. It is a doctored up, poli-speak, “made for media” tag to “sell” (legitimize, mainstream, market), an otherwise, unsellable/marketable idea (which failed in Europe in the 1940’s). frankly, the semantic shell game and all the punditry does not help to definitively identify “what it is”, it IS WHAT IT IS, which is a more palatable and appealing name for visceral, base, hate. The GOP and the current POTUS are not the alt-right, but they (and some recently departed West Wing advisors) ruthlessly and shamelessly “vetted” the alt-right and embraced it as a valuable slice of the demographic (red state/blue state) pie. this is a fascinating and historical moment, is there a difference between a transparent racist, and a politician (or movement), which benefits from transparent/naked racist ideology?

As a conservative, for years i abhorred identity politics. Sadly, i have come to the realization that it is inevitable. White Americans will either learn to play the identity politics game themselves or will be displaced and dispriveleged in the country their ancestors built. I will give you a hint..when invaders start taking down your country’s monuments and rewriting its history you are already losing. The choice is ours.

“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion.”

That’s correct. You have to get to know those of Nelson Mandela (a convicted terrorist whose beloved wife organized daily “necklacings” of political opponents) and Barack Obama’s ilk before you form a realistic opinion of them.

AC is making the bogus assumption that college degrees are somehow differentiating the alt-right from the “toothless illiterate Klansman” or “bitter, angry urban skinhead”. A degree is useless, if one doesn’t use it wisely. Take Richard Spencer, James Damore, and the would-have-been “alt 10”, whose Harvard college acceptances got rescinded. Every one of those folks had great privilege AND no immigrants, women, or people color to compete with, yet they STILL threw their privilege away. They blame ANYONE else for their failures, because people like you are letting them do so, now. End of story!

The thing is when blacks begin to feel power and a secure place in America then their true colors show-at least among many. Left unchecked they would become the biggest racists of all.

THEY? Undoubtedly SOME people of African descent would do exactly that. But its equally invalid to say “all whites are racist” or to say blacks “would become the biggest racists of all.”

These are really very diverse categories… which is why racism is invalid in the first place.

I worked and ate and napped alongside black men who had known segregation, Jim Crow and the occasional lynching. Their culture was very different from mine despite the fact that we lived no more than five miles from one another. They laughed at “the white boy” who didn’t know how to talk up a girl and who worked way too hard in the heat – – and I gawked at their easy sexuality and total disregard for authority.

Now, we come to the hard part. Their culture IS the product of slavery and Jim Crow, these attitudes are NOT acceptable, and this isn’t going to change overnight. If you’re paid nothing, or next to nothing, you don’t value hard work and effort, you value doing the least you can for the man whose going to reap all the rewards of your labor. And sex, just as for Neapolitan peasants, serfs, and wage slaves, is “the poor man’s opera.” After several generations, this doesn’t just go away. So, how do we frame education and work and social inter-action to make some progress without writing off whole classes of human beings in the process? Especially when, there are quite a few people of African descent who don’t buy into that stuff?

After a couple of weeks of work on their science project, my son asked one of these boys why he wasn’t doing any work and was relying upon my son to do everything. The boy’s response was: “because you’re white and I’m black.”

Mhmm. I know the type. I ran into it when I was working in the library at the boys and girls club in Sherman Park. (Yes, that Sherman Park, where a collective temper tantrum by a handful of thugs was blown up in the national press as something between a riot and a protest.) There were kids who maintained, “I’m black, I’m supposed to get bad grades and act up and steal and get into fights. That’s what we do.” Now that is a legacy of white supremacy, an internalization of what some white man told his great-great-great-grandparents. Not all black people believed it, but some did. In a way, it makes life easier when initiative and aspirations and ambition aren’t going to get you anywhere anyway.

What has Rod been telling us about the power and endurance of Tradition? Well, in some families, this is Tradition. Its not going to go away quick and easy. Incidentally, I’ve worked with a few young black people on science projects, and it wasn’t easy, but I insisted that they figure things out. I don’t give answers away. I ask questions until the kid figures it out for themselves. Some who are grown now still stop by my place on Christmas. Oh, and I remember being paired with another student on a project in my senior year of high school, who was even more pale than me, who didn’t do anything because “I have a part time job, I can’t make time for the project.” Our English teacher was skeptical, but I loyally maintained he had done all he could and sort of left things vague enough for him to share the grade.

If the lazy bums in your life happen to be black, its easy to think that black people are lazy bums. If they think being lazy is the way black people are supposed to be, that makes it even easier. Unless you know a wide variety of black people and you know they are actually all over the map.

Now, imagine that he has settled for a job he doesn’t really like (or worse, can’t find employment) and can’t really afford marriage or family for several more years. In that job, he is forced to attend quarterly “diversity” seminars in which he must acknowledge his “white privilege” to his black female boss.

I do have an easier time challenging this horse manure. I live in a mostly black neighborhood; for reasons I never planned that just happened a majority of my friends are black, I write about black history for major publishers, I’ve gotten by on a low income, without dependents, for most of my life, because I wanted to devote my time to things that don’t pay, or not well. Its easier for me than for someone who badly needs the job to support a wife and three children who is one paycheck away from defaulting on a mortgage who doesn’t actually know that many black people and has to take the word of the person they’re talking to for what it means to “be black.” Not everyone has a next door neighbor whose father was Haitian and married her mother in Atlanta who thinks Rachel Dolezal should have kept her job with the NAACP.

But, its time to develop an ethos that kicks Jim Crow in the teeth AND kicks this “white privilege” horse manure in the teeth, that recognizes REAL structural reasons people of African descent do suffer some real enduring disadvantages while not taking excuses for failure. And not accepting excuses for failure means instilling a sense that YOU COULD DO THIS with flying colors, if you just recognize that the effort might get you somewhere. And then making that real.

They are too lazy even to learn that the Klan lost its relevance long ago, and the most powerful white supremacist organization of today consists of entirely different people, who are very far from being illiterate.

The original KKK wasn’t illiterate either. They were the most educated and powerful men of their local community.

Then a mutual Latina friend from church invited him to coffee and told him that he was the white devil, the cause of her oppression.

“…the youthful alt-right bitterly lambast the ‘boomers’ for their lack of explicit ethnocentrism, their rejection of patriarchy, and their failure to maintain America’s old demographic characteristics and racial hierarchy…”

The Baby Boom generation is generally considered to comprise those Americans born between 1946 and 1965. The decision to commence the demographic remodeling of America was not official until LBJ signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 (AKA the Hart-Celler Act) on 03 Oct 1965. The first “boomers” to vote did so in 1967, when they turned 21. By then, it was too late.

The Alt-Right is tiny, has no money, no political allies and is universally shunned by the media, churches etc. It is therefore no threat. Antifa on the other has many capitalist sponsors, and enjoys widespread enforsement, if not active promotion, from the media and from politicians, both liberal and conservative. It is therefore a very serious threat to freedom.

Why does no one ever critically analyse this movement? In my experience its activists (and I’ve encountered quite a few over the years) are very far from the fearless macho street warriors the swooning groupie media portray them as. Usually gauche, weedy characters, antifas find both self-validation and safety (both physical and emotional) hunting in culturally approved packs. Talk to them for more than a couple of minutes and one quickly divines how politically illiterate and intellectually vapid they are. They resemble no one so much as ‘Dave Spart’, the pompous, but completely incoherent leftist caricature who used to feature in the British satirical publication Private Eye

The Alt-Right has two main wings: The Alt-West and the Alt-White. The Alt-West is drawn largely from paleocons, libertarians, and former conservatives; and is summed up best by Vox Day’s 16 Points of the Alternative Right. The Alt-White is White Nationalist with white supremacist, national socialist, and pagan elements. Both factions claim the name and used to tolerate each other as allies, but now each faction largely denies the other is truly Alt-Right.

“So what it comes down to are white people going to give away their country? Until blacks become cooperative and productive things need to stay as they are. Sad maybe but that’s just the way it has to be.”

ohhh good grief, White people’s country. Te country belongs to citizens, and i would include those artificially locked out by law, by practice or any other nonsense tat lacks substance.

Give way, this makes no sense. I would love to hear the explanation of what whites own by presence of skin color. I know whites feel they own ideas. I know that whites think the ideas they own are unique to whiteness, but history tells quite a different tale.

All the nations in the world defend their national cultures. This is the good side of diversity. But this is not allowed in the United States now. Those who practice it are called racists. “Divide and rule” is as old as mankind. Every strategic manual preaches that. The present chaos is the obvious result of decades of radical leftist brainwashing in the schools and universities, in the media, and in the legal profession. New groups of “oppressed minorities” are constantly being invented, even the most absurd and unnatural ones. And they all rage with fury and hatred, even violence. The strange thing is that they are allowed to have these feelings and actions, but not the other side. Those who love the USA must fervently oppose that by all reasonable means. There is no middle ground. Those who think otherwise are lost in wishful thinking. It means to ignore what good-natured tolerance brought us. The stakes cannot be higher. They involve nothing less than freedom and justice.

The term “alt-right” has no meaning. It never had a clearly agreed-on reference, and now it’s merely a smear term used by the Left to refer to anyone who is neither a leftist nor a supporter of the Republican wing of the Republocrat machine. It is used by them to equate anyone in that category with the pinhead fringe of neo-Nazis and Kluxers. Many on the Left, in their ignorance, actually believe in that equation, but the term has no use in serious political analysis.
Pinhead fringes are always with us, and it is the Democratic Party and its instruments that have been taken over by their pinhead fringe. The neo-Nazi and Kluxer pinhead fringe could be dealt with as a law-enforcement problem when it gets out of hand, and scorned and ignored otherwise. It is spoken of as an important political phenomenon only because it is useful to the Left as a bogeyman.
The real political phenomenon is the revolt of the center against the ruling extremes–and these are not the Left and Right of the stereotypes. They are, on the one hand, a treasonous alliance of old corporate America and organized religion, and on the other, a treasonous alliance of new corporate America and the militant Left.

The “alt-right” (whatever that means) is a function of those not likely to ignore the cognitive dissonance of what they’re told vs what they see. That used to be called “common sense”. Watch this and you’ll see some of that common sense. Race In America: Black and White. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL1bTKdEtpl63q7nC9U0RvA/videos

GK,
Preserving culture and heritage is a legitimate concern,but it has nothing to do with color. Or it shouldn’t anyway.
If we could just join forces to keep the social fabric from unraveling we could make a difference.
The racial stuff is destructive and a distraction.

This has some meat and potatoes. So black people should cease acknowledging color as a factor and be color neutral. I get it. And I assume you mean white should cease doing the same.

So after more than 200 years of whites building a societal structure on color so deep, the two are all but inseparable, blacks should pretend that color is not a factor.

You know one of te reasons I like the current res is because unmasks what’s at play. As with the perspective of several writers on TAC, no few congressman on both sides of the aisle and the US public — It’s clear the majority would prefer Pres Lincoln’s opposition, that backs are just not up to the standards of whites.

That the Japanese finance minister was correct when he said blacks should be consumers and not players in the society. It’s the kind of play that assigns , a skilled surgeon to a post at HUD as opposed to the Surgeon General.

And just pretend that all is ell on the matter and in fact all will be well. That in order to have a functioning society, blacks should pretend to the sensitivities of whites — that color just is not a factor.

Elite,
Definitely. I think we should all put race aside and concentrate on culture.
You know, I hear much about black and white, but Hispanic folk are often left out of the conversation and they represent a large demographic population.

I think your analysis is interesting for the parallels it has with the demographic realities of young men attracted to becoming jihadis. The same things have been said about them. Maybe some people are just going to choose evil no matter what they are exposed to. They are attracted to ideas because of the ideas, not because of conditions or policies.

“Unless you know a wide variety of black people and you know they are actually all over the map.”

One thing I did notice during the Obama era was the number of young black guys on the bus taking their babies around town in slings, very young babies, sometimes with other children or male friends in tow with the mother not present. That really is quite a departure from the public image of young black men, and it was nice to see, though I’m sure this feeds into the frustration over stereotypical media images.

“Despite crowing from the alt-right that their rally was a success, the end result probably did their movement more harm than good.”
I think you missed something here yourself due to how you view these people. Their battle in Charlottesville was a victory to them because it got them national attention and has put them in the spotlight. They don’t CARE if a majority of Americans see them as terrible people because of the coverage. What they want is their message to get out to those who WILL side with their point of view and see that you CAN be influential and CAN get attention and also as a way to “prove” that they need to be ready for violence because the left “will attack” them physically – which of course just bolsters their position.
You can argue that is wrong thinking but that doesn’t mean such thinking is not behind their actions or that it continues to work at some level for these groups since they have not died out despite decades of being seen as “not acceptable by society”.

This article seems to be focusing on justifying the concept of “white privilege” and the “fight” against it, that is not a conservsative concept, rather a post-modern neo-marxist concept (aka leftist). It is not a fact, rather an invention, for wealth redistribution purposes. It is even disturbingly racist against white people.
The writer, or maybe even the whole theamericanconservstive.com magazine seems to be a fake-conservative site, with the blatant promotion of marxist concepts.

There is no such “fact” as “white privilege.” Being discriminated against by every major college and employer is not a privilege. Being routine attacked in the street, a la the “knockout game” (or “polar bear punching,” as it is otherwise known) is not a privilege. Being routinely told not to speak about racial issues or apologize due to the color of one’s skin is not a privilege.

I think the alt-right makes perfect sense IF one believes that left-wing racial identity politics are here to stay – in that case, yes, white people need ethnic representation of their own. The reason I disagree with the alt-right is because I think the Leftist ethnic identity politics promulgated by Al Sharpton, BLM, La Raza, university professors, media figures and others to be fundamentally racist and wrong. I also think the Leftist ideological regime is uniquely vulnerable due to the inherent divisiveness of such tactics – how long before Left-wing, “goodwhite” college professors like the author of this piece are deposed by those they have radicalized, before the black nationalists start resenting the Hispanic nationalists who start resenting the Muslims and so on. If the Left wants to play identity politics games, it sows the seeds of its own destruction. This is why the alt-right is unnecessary, and Left-wing identity politics will surely fail on their own.

The stereotypes have no useful function. They assume racism is always “white” – the Nation of Islam is racist (read Malcolm X’s late quotes if you’re deluded – he makes it clear). I do not doubt historical (and contemporary) racism against black people in America. But stereotypes would also say blacks are gangster/crack dealer loving, thug approving scum – coming from rap songs etc!

One, I know many who are total repudiations of this! But the big issue is that certain people want to perpetuate this stuff! Culture in the US (and not just the US) means sporting stars, and big selling music stars are celebrated. We also live in a society that embraces victimhood! And is a litigatious one that demands “compensation”. And so we move from a society where black “radicals” demanded they be given the right to equally show their worth, to this one! A shift from the demand we own up to respecting the dignity of man, and the Christian cry that all believers are brothers, to this nonsense!

How many “protesters” realise that Lee was personally against slavery? He freed the slaves he inherited looooong before the Civil War (as Jefferson didn’t – even though his personal letters are now apparently treated by the SCOUS and others as being somehow part of the US Constitution). Lee was not responsible for the Civil War, he simply felt his loyalty to his state over rode his loyalty to the Federal Government (a concept of the US War of Independence BTW – the people of the colonies (ie the States) had a first loyalty to their colonial authority, not the King or the Parliament in Westminster! As Shelby Foote said, South Carolina and the other confederate states would never have agreed to join the union in 1789 if they didn’t think they could leave if it didn’t suit them!

The fact that a poll showed white high schoolers favoring Trump over Clinton by a large margin may not have as much to do with racism as one might think. For one thing, Hillary Clinton – who is just as white as Trump, after all – had a stilted way of speaking and campaigning that turned young people off, as opposed to Obama, who was very popular with young people in his campaigns. Second, high school students are, well, high school students. Their political views are a bit unsophisticated, and they do love a Class Clown, which Trump certainly was. His appeal may have had more to do with his Bad Boy persona than his racist views.